Letters to the Editor 3/2/2017

JOHN RAOUX / ASSOCIATED PRESS The field starts the Daytona 500 race Sunday at Daytona International Speedway in Florida. A writer says that NASCAR’s efforts to recover lost audience have backfired.

Dishonesty pattern

Editor: Part of Darwin’s theory of evolution is that natural selection will allow preservation of traits useful for a species to survive. Conversely, the Trump administration seems to have inherited maladaptive traits from previous administrations.

Justice Department lawyers asserted in papers related to the travel ban court appeal that a federal judge in Washington state should not “second guess” the president on matters of national security. Our system of government, with good reason, gives the president latitude in executive orders, but we need to have faith that the executive acts with objective counsel and some evidence that the order is in the best interest of the country and not based on ideological bias. The idea that a president should not be “second guessed” in a ruling on constitutionality is reminiscent of the claims by members of Bush administration as to the existence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq prior to the 2003 invasion, despite the 700 inspections that turned up nothing. Such was the pushback by the intelligence community that they sought to discredit a United Nations official rather than their own intelligence.

The second trait is to characterize the media as the opposition, as Trump adviser Steve Bannon has done. We saw this in the Nixon administration when the wheels started to fall off the Watergate wagon.

Last, Trump’s altered sense of numerical proportionalities (“millions of illegals” voted for Hillary Clinton, for instance) harken to the days of the Vietnam War when the Pentagon and the Johnson administration scaled down figures of American casualties despite media reports to the contrary.

Each incident challenged credibility of the administrations involved and did not bode well for them or the country. Hopefully, there will be a quick learning curve and the aberrant behaviors in governing soon will be corrected.

STEVEN EISNER

GORDONVILLE,

LANCASTER COUNTY

Bad reality show

Editor: What can I say or do to wake up from this nightmare in the White House and Congress?

We want a future that includes and uplifts all people. I have tried to give it a chance, to wait and see, but I feel like I am watching a bad reality show and I am unable to change the channel.

President Trump has created fear, chaos, anger and unrest. There has been a loss of transparency and the spread of alternative truths. When I was a child I was taught it was either true or a lie. Have values and morals changed that much?

Silencing the voices in the Environmental Protection Agency is like locking the door of the hen house with the fox inside. Climate change has changed our planet in harmful ways. Oceans are warmer and rising; floods, droughts, fires, tornadoes and other events raise alarm. Without clean air, water and food humans will follow. Many jobs could be had in the clean energy field if we have the insight.

About the wall, did Trump hear about tunnels and ladders? What is wrong with bridges of friendship? It would cost less. America always has been a place to be proud of because it was created by different nationalities working together; be free to speak your mind and worship as you please.

The press and media are our guardians; when they ask the president and his representatives a question people deserve an answer.

Our values are now questionable to our allies; they are unsure of our commitment. Our enemies are waiting for us to falter.

We are adrift in a boat. We have a captain and his handpicked crew that does not have both oars in the water.

DAWN BIESECKER

MADISON TWP.

Racing to recover

Editor: Usually, I watch two auto races per year on television, the Daytona 500 and Indianapolis 500.

But after Sunday’s fiasco at Daytona, won by Kurt Busch with less than half the field running at the end, that may be down to Indianapolis only.

NASCAR’s latest desperate effort is to reverse downward trends in attendance. Television ratings, according to CBS News, have tumbled 43 percent and NASCAR stopped giving attendance estimates at races in 2012. NASCAR runs events in stages worth championship points and even awards points in qualifying races at Daytona.

Something tells me NASCAR will be back at the idea desk this week because the 40-, 40- and 80-lap stages of Sunday’s race (a total of 200 laps) created a sense of aggressive racing that caused numerous crashes, took out top drivers and caused the race to last a nauseating four hours.

When the Great Recession of 2008 hit, NASCAR was in the midst of expanding by taking races to places not used before at the cost of dumping traditional sites and messing with the schedule to take Darlington’s traditional Labor Day race and move it elsewhere.

The moves have backfired, but nobody seems to have been held accountable. Now that fans and advertisers are abandoning NASCAR, the executives have panicked, changing the points system virtually every year to try to intensify interest and doing anything to bring back fans and money.

Top-name drivers retiring hasn’t helped, either, but when races that sold out a year in advance now have tickets available on race day it is obvious this panic has not been lost on fans or advertisers.

It seems chasing the almighty dollar has claimed another victim.

JOE MIEGOC

CARBONDALE

Remove from office

Editor: The commander in-tweet held a recent press conference in which he called the news media “very unfair” for reporting the truth and for exposing his many and frequent lies to the public.

He resembles 6-year-old children who scream, “It’s not fair” when their parents tell them they can’t always get what they want. Even when photographic or video evidence clearly shows a statement is not true, he relentlessly doubles down, insisting the mainstream news media provide “fake news.” This is not sane adult behavior.

Thankfully, the media continue to expose his mental and moral deficiency.

Hopefully, responsible Republicans will realize that the 25th Amendment, enabling removal from office due to physical or mental incompetence, applies to this president.

BRUCE JOFFE

PIEDMONT, CALIFORNIA

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